


The Fall (The Journey)

by TT_Angst_Queen



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Because we all know what Happens, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, IT'S ME, It's Bucky guys, Not Really Character Death, One Shot, Torture, World War II, because really, you should know by now I do't really do happy fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 22:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TT_Angst_Queen/pseuds/TT_Angst_Queen
Summary: “Don’t do it, son,” Duggan muttered, quiet enough that their captors didn’t hear him. “It’s not worth your life."Bucky wanted to protest, but a sudden scream made him look ahead at the noise, to see a horrifying sight.





	The Fall (The Journey)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cutsycat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/gifts).



 

* * *

 

 

James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes was raised by a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, something almost unheard of then. But the marriage Mr. and Mrs. Barnes of Brooklyn New York had been quite the scandal among their friends, not that Bucky’s parents cared. Love, after all, had always been stronger than religion, in his parents' minds.  

 

With two conflicting religions, Bucky, as a consequence, didn’t believe in much of anything, other than there was some sort of higher power and an afterlife. He tried to hold on to that with irons fists when he entered the War.

 

Bucky had been as surprised as the rest of the 107th when HYDRA soldiers had stormed their camp and taken the whole squadron captive faster than anything Bucky had ever seen or heard of. They had been marched miles upon miles, and HYDRA was relentless, almost machine-like in their marching; none of the HYDRA soldiers showed any signs of tiring on the long march towards their base.

 

Bucky, at one point of almost pure desperation, had made a motion towards one the Soldiers to steal one of their guns but froze when a hand clamped like a vice on his wrist, and he looked up into the grim face of Tim Duggan, who shook his head at him.

 

“Don’t do it, son,” Duggan muttered, quiet enough that their captors didn’t hear him. “It’s not worth your life.”

 

Bucky wanted to protest, but a sudden scream made him look ahead at the noise, to see a horrifying sight.

 

Another soldier, part of the 107th, had reached for one of the HYDRA weapons, just like Bucky was going to attempt, and had been caught, his hand gripped in the iron hands of one of their captors.

 

The rest of them looked on with shock, as with one shot of the HYDRA agents gun, the soldier was… gone. Not just dead, but disintegrated, not even a body to send home in a box, just… nothing, not even dust.

 

Swallowing, Bucky looked back at Tim Duggan, and nodded, hoping he conveyed his thanks in the look alone.  

 

They had been marched to the HYDRA base, located in woods so dense that Bucky dispaired on ever being found by anyone looking for them; and even if they did look, by the look of what HYDRA used as an execution method, there wouldn’t even be bodies to find.

 

The base was huge, and they were immediately marched to rows and rows of circular cages, groups of five to eight of the 107th being thrown into each of the ones not already occupied by POW’s.

 

The place was almost unbearably hot, and each of them was sweating in their shorts within minutes of entering the cages, the HYDRA guards laughing at them mockingly as they locked them in.

 

People would be dragged out and sent to work, some came back and some didn’t. There were rumors that some of the men that were taken were used in an experiment conducted by one of the scientists, and that those men were among the ones that didn’t come back at all.

 

Bucky watched the days go sluggishly by, a haze of sweat, tears, and half-hearted hopes muttered under his breath.

 

When a group of guards had stormed into his cell and dragged him out kicking and screaming, Bucky had hoped beyond hope as he passed the working men that they weren’t taking him to the rumored labs.

 

Hope never meant much in War, he supposed.

“Ah, Sergeant Barnes, yes?” The short scientist with the glasses and bowtie smiled at him, the expression making Bucky inwardly shiver. The mouth was smiling, but the eyes showed nothing but malicious glee.

 

“Sergeant Barnes, James Buchannan, 32557038.” Bucky wasn’t gonna give anything to these bastards, no matter what they did to him. The Sergeant stayed defiant, glaring at the bespeckled scientist with as much hate as he could muster in his twisted and dry, cracked lips.

 

“Alas,” the man smirked, patting his arm, making Bucky flinch, “that will not do you much good, I am afraid, but you American’s are stubborn. If you must use it to comfort yourself…” The man shrugged, “you may use it,” Leaning forward, his glasses glinting of the low light, he looked straight into Bucky’s eyes, making the soldier shiver at the closeness of the enemy. “However, I am afraid, like the others before you, it will not do much to help.”

 

Bucky had hated to admit it, but the scientist, Arnim Zola, he later found out, was right- It didn’t help. It was no comfort.

 

First, they injected him with something that almost looked blue, but with a hue to it, that was just on this side of _wrong_ to be anything close to blue. Whatever it was felt like fire in his veins and ice in his heart, making him both shiver and sweat, screaming as the injection felt like it was tearing through every muscle and nerve in his body and repairing it, over an over, leaving him a sweaty, trembling mess once the agony had left, whimpering out the same name, rank, and serial number.

 

“You seem like a stubborn one, Sergeant Barnes,” Zola murmured to him, once again patting his arm and ignoring Bucky’s flinch, “Yes, I believe you will do nicely.” Zola smiled, the expression nasty and manic.

 

“After all, you have survived so far. The others didn’t, you should be proud.”

 

Bucky was anything but goddamned _proud_.

 

From then on was a wave of ‘testing’.

 

Cutting, burning, slicing, dicing… hell, if he wasn’t screaming in agony when he wasn't reciting his name, rank and serial, he would have made some bad joke about being a damn vegetable on HYDRA’s cutting board.

 

If the pain wasn’t enough to keep him awake, then the fact that everytime he even tried to sleep, and was splashed with freezing cold water sure didn’t help.

 

By the time that little punk from Brooklyn had started ripping the straps right off him, Bucky was a delirious mess and was half-convinced that Steve looking like he had swallowed some sort of special potion to make him more muscled then some of the strong-men Bucky had seen at the circus, was just another in a long line of hallucinations.

 

“I thought you were dead,” his hallucination gasped, holding onto Bucky, and Bucky noted a slight tremble in ‘Steve’s’ body as he grasped Bucky, and looked at him like he was something precious.

 

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky muttered, looking his hallucination up and down.

 

The whole way back from the HYDRA base to home-base, Bucky was still in a state of shock, from weeks of torture and experimentation, not to mention his best friend turning into some sort of...Super Soldier, while he was away. Steve had eventually convinced him that this was real when Bucky had gotten some water and a few hours sleep on his friends back (and shit, it was weird that that skinny kid that used to barely be able to carry a brick could carry a fully grown if half-starved man for hours without complaint!).

 

As happy as Bucky was that his friend no longer gasped for every breath and had a limit on his life, He was not happy on how he went about it; Taking all the stupid with Bucky, indeed. The older man had cussed out Steve so bad once he got the full story that even Dum Dum had a hint of pink in his cheeks behind his red beard. The damn punk had signed up with the Army just to get experimented on and turned into...Captain America.

 

Hell, he was damn proud of his best friend, but God _damn_ that little punk could have fuckin’ _died_ , and Bucky probably would have never known what happened to him if he had kicked it since the project was apparently so _damn_ secret.

 

Cursing out his friend hid his own great fear of some German scientist, alli or not, experimenting on his best pal like Zola did to him… Logically he knew that Steves own experience was _very_ different, but in his heart, he still couldn’t stop himself from remembering every agonizing injection, every cut every burn, every punch and kick and stab and-

 

He just couldn’t _separate_ it.

 

Watching his best friend, the little punk that could barely take or give a punch to a bully, take on the biggest group of bullies the world had ever seen with an ease that frankly made him a little wary, was an eye-opener, and separated it quickly enough.

 

HYDRA base after HYDRA base was taken down and blown up and destroyed _utterly_ and _completely_ . Bucky watched his friends back with his sniper’s scope and put a bullet in any enemy that was goddamn stupid enough to go for his pal’s back, and he relished in the _crack_ of his rifle as enemy after enemy going after his Stevie fell from his bullet without hesitation, his finger primed on the trigger, ready to protect with a harshness that he refused to think about. Bucky was ruthless and merciless when he took down HYDRA agents and didn’t regret a single bullet that left his gun, not a single one.

 

Not after Zola.

 

He wondered what his ma would think of him now.

 

Would little Becca still look up to him?

 

Would any of his family?

 

As Bucky hung on for dear life to a piece of fragile pipe on a train over a bridge in the Swiss Alps, Bucky wondered what came next, after death.

 

Bucky felt terror fill him as the pipe broke and realized that he would find out sooner than he wanted to, as he began falling down the endless ravine, screaming incoherently as he watched his best friend fade from sight.

 

He hoped that he wouldn’t feel it when he hit the ground.

 

But hope wasn’t something you really should count on, in War.

 

* * *

 


End file.
